The Black Keys Refuse To Stream El Camino

The Black Keyshave so far refused to allow digital music services, particularly Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and Mog, to stream their latest album El Camino, according to Digital Music News and The L.A. Times. That’s not to say there are no digital releases though, as the album, which was released earlier this week on Jan. 6, can be found on both the iTunes store and Amazon MP3.

Other artists including Coldplay, Mac Miller and a number of smaller indie bands have also refused to have their material made available on internet streaming services, all voicing similar concerns that streaming availability hurts album sales and that artists receive negligible income from having their material available. The services, of course, disagree and assert counterclaims. In particular, Spotify claims to have “driven more than $150 million of revenue to … artists, publishers and labels since our launch three years ago.”

The revenue statistic most commonly floated is that a song must be played on these services between 100 and 150 times for the band to receive the same revenue they would acquire from a single digital download.